Shifting Wrongs to Rights: Lessons in Human Rights from the Situation of Mothers Impacted by Albinism in Africa

Abstract Debates about legitimizing human rights in Africa have centred on making universal human rights principles relevant to local social and cultural contexts. Localizing human rights norms requires seeing human rights in terms of relevance to specific situations rather than as the application of abstract principles. In this paper, scholars and advocates analyse the challenges in the practice of human rights, with a focus on mothers impacted by albinism, whether as mothers of children with albinism or as mothers with albinism themselves. Women and girls impacted by albinism are particularly vulnerable to human rights violations and reflect the unfulfilled promise of the United Nations principle to ‘Leave no one behind’. On account of intersecting factors—including denial of humanity; gendered stigma, discrimination and disenfranchisement; lack of access to the social determinants of health; and violence—mothers impacted by albinism are truly amongst those ‘furthest behind’. Drawing on the frameworks of vernacularization and culturalization, we conceptualize and contextualize human rights in relation to the unique experiences of mothers impacted by albinism in Tanzania, South Africa, and Ghana. Our analysis takes up four particularities that pose challenges to protecting the rights of mothers impacted by albinism: personhood as foundation for human rights; the communal nature of human rights; proportionality and human rights; and the intersectional nature of human rights. These particularities shed light on human rights practice for mothers impacted by albinism and carry implications for human rights practice more broadly.